


Old Familiar Sting

by Ladycat



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Bruises, Dark, Domestic Violence, M/M, Rough Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-12
Updated: 2014-02-12
Packaged: 2018-01-12 02:56:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,922
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1181093
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ladycat/pseuds/Ladycat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It has the wrong effect. John goes frighteningly still, eyes wide as he stares at nothing. "That -- " His voice dries up, his throat locked. Rodney watches as he swallows, Adam's apple bobbing. "You're more messed up than I am. Christ.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Old Familiar Sting

**Author's Note:**

> HEED THE TAGS. This contains blatant descriptions of domestic violence and while I use it for porn in this very purely fantasy sense, the whole thing is one long trigger for many people.

He doesn't flinch when it starts to hurt. He's got no poker-face to speak of, sure, but that doesn't matter; John's not looking at his face. John's not looking at anything at all, really, eyes wide and distant as his body moves automatically.

Rodney lets him. He controls his breathing, working past that flare of heat and pain that makes his body want to curl up, forcing himself not to tense. He doesn't know how successful he is, but again, it doesn't really matter. So long as he's there, and not fighting. Willing. Those are the only requirements.

After, he stands in front of the mirror for a long, long time.

* * *

"You know, Rodney, we all joke about how clumsy you are, but this is getting a wee bit ridiculous." Beckett's voice is even, bordering on teasing. He doesn't actually think anything is wrong, and why should he? Nothing is.

"Yes, well, you try tromping through a jungle with creeper-vines that like the taste of physicist," he snaps, because it's expected and its own kind of fun. Beckett is one of the few who gets how much Rodney enjoys being witty, being verbose and sarcastically brilliant. He makes a great straight-man.

He also doesn't comment on how most of the bruises are already starting to fade towards yellow, much older than the team's impromptu Indiana Jones impersonation. Maybe he doesn't even notice.

"You're a klutz," Ronon calls from his own bed, and chuckles as almost everyone in the Infirmary stops to stare at him. "What? I listen."

"Neanderthal," Rodney mutters under his breath. It shouldn't hurt when Ronon says things like that. He should be _grateful_ , since it only works in his -- their -- favor. But it does hurt, and Rodney isn't quite certain why. Thinking about it makes his throat tight.

"Yes, well, Colonel, do try and take better care of our Chief Scientist, hm?" Beckett's back to teasing, although his eyes are serious as they look over Rodney's shoulder.

Quiet as a phantom, Colonel Sheppard nods.

* * *

Each gray-shadowed mark is kissed, John's mouth hot and wet as he uses his tongue to press down hard. Rodney doesn't bother hiding his reactions here, knowing each gasp and choked-off cry is the goal. He writhes, sweat heavy over his skin where John doesn't kiss it away, his cock aching between his legs, the room filled with the sound of his pain and John's ragged panting.

"Gonna say no?" John grates, his eyes empty reflections in the dark.

Rodney doesn't say anything at all.

* * *

It's almost twenty four hours before he can sit down again. No one notices.

* * * 

Pain explodes like a firecracker below his eye, multi-colored sparkles blinding him. He moans, doesn't bother hiding the noise, and is only peripherally aware of the low, grating _growl_ that starts up in response.

"Does this bother you?" Tarlan is big and broad enough to give Ronon a run for Caveman of the Year, more like a hairy bear than a human being. His fist stinks, acrid and fetid both, until Rodney gags more then he manages to inhale, the pressure on his windpipe not helping. "Very well. Perhaps now you will agree to what I have asked for, hm?"

It's Tarlan's voice that is so incongruous. Light and precise, each word given a linguist’s care as it is formed, the clipped tones sounding more like a proper British accent than the stilted, staid accents they're used to finding.

"Touch him again, and I'm gonna take my time killing you."

Tarlan laughs, but Rodney doesn't listen to that. Instead he hears Teyla's sharp inhale, the shift of her body as she looks at Sheppard in surprise. Ronon doesn't react, not in ways Rodney can quantify with his body dangling several feet off the ground, terrified eyes glued to the thick, bearded face before him. Tarlan is all he can see, all he can think of, but Rodney's always been good at thinking of many things at once. Ronon's silence is almost as telling as Teyla's small noises.

"Perhaps we will run away?" Tarlan almost giggles when Rodney is dropped to the ground, crying out because he can't be silent when it hurts like this. He's not supposed to be. "I will take this one you worry about so much, and you will never see him again. Perhaps I will mark him as my own."

That's too much. Rodney knows seconds before the eruption of movement, the ratta-tat-tat of Teyla's P-90's useless cover-fire. Sheppard's almost berserker in his rage and when he and Ronon finally subdue Tarlan, it takes Ronon pulling Sheppard _off_ of Tarlan to save the hairy ape's life.

Rodney feels almost flattered.

* * *

"Where else?" Hands, pinched and cruel, work over Rodney's body. "Here, this one? This one, too?"

Rodney nods, too breathless to speak. Spots like novas flare before his eyes, swallowing up the darkness he can't stand. It hurts, it _hurts_ , in ways it never has before, because John is frantic. He hasn't calmed down despite Rodney's three days in the infirmary, hovering on the edges as he watches Rodney heal, watches him reach a point of baseline so John can take him away and give them both true peace.

A sudden punch has Rodney curling up and gagging, coughing helplessly into the mattress. He whimpers, an animal sound he hates, but it earns him a caress over flesh no longer sickly yellow but now black and dark with newly broken capillaries. Or it will be in a few hours, at least.

"Shh," John murmurs, kissing the mark he made. "I've got you."

* * *

Zelenka catches him touching the bruise on his wrist. It makes it hard to type, but that isn't why Rodney can't keep his fingers away from it.

"Tarlan?" Zelenka asks, his voice quiet. It's clipped, his accent biting off words the way Tarlan's had. His eyes are big behind his glasses, and understanding.

"No," Rodney snaps, suddenly furious, vicious. "I'm a klutz, don't you remember?"

Zelenka wasn't there to remember, but rumor helpfully fills in the gaps. Ronon's very first Earth-phrase, especially at Rodney's expense, is an oft-told story. 

After a few tense seconds, Zelenka lowers his head and nods. "Come look at this converter, yes? It is flaring and I do not like the output I see."

* * *

Rodney tries very hard not to limp as he walks.

The whispers claim he is trying to be stoic, to bear his wounds the way any of his team would, quiet and minimized. _Honor_ , some call it. _Growing up_ is what everyone else says. Even Elizabeth.

Beckett is the only one who knows it's the right ankle that was sprained, not the left.

* * *

"Look, I'm not accusing him of anything."

Rodney freezes, back shivering against the cool material of the wall. It's a plastic-alloy, with almost metallic properties, Rodney knows. It isn't any better than wall-board and plaster and it's a bitch to repair if it breaks.

"Really? Because it sure sounds like an accusation to me."

It's a full thirty seconds after he identifies Sheppard's voice that Rodney relaxes.

"I'm _worried_. He's been quieter than usual, except when he remembers to be loud; he's losing what little sense of humor he had, and I'm not joking about the injuries, Colonel. None of them are serious, true, but they aren't healing. _At all_. It's like he... "

"Like he what, Carson?"

"This is just a guess, mind you, I've no evidence -- "

"Like he _what?"_

A sigh. Long and exhausted and Rodney wishes he could echo it.

"Like he's making them worse before he has a chance to heal. Like they're intentional." The silence stretches and there's no way to see the expression on Beckett or Sheppard's face to guess what they're thinking. "You need to do something, Sheppard. Or I'll have to go to Heightmeyer."

Threats never work well with Sheppard. Rodney knows this. So does Beckett, but he doesn't hear it the way Rodney knows Sheppard does.

"You really think he's that psychologically cracked?"

"No, I don't. He's still functioning normally in other areas and no one else is reporting any odd behavior, so I don't think he's cracked per se. I'm not about to find a nice padded room, I'm just worried. Some of the injuries he has are pretty serious and how he managed to bruise his own kidneys I'll never be able to guess."

_A fist, each knuckle like iron into his back, fingerprints etched in blue and black and red on Rodney's skin._

"That bad?"

Rodney winces at the catch to Sheppard's voice.

"He must've been pissing blood for at least three days," Beckett says flatly.

Four days, and hiding that had been a bitch when they were on missions.

"Christ. All right, I'll talk to him."

Rodney knows he won't.

* * *

It's a week before John slips back into his room.

He rolls Rodney onto his stomach, hot, hot hands scalding skin that's been denied for seven long days. It's too dark to see and he mutters something, the light flaring too bright in response. Rodney closes his eyes.

"They're still -- " John's voice cracks and grows hard, "Rodney, what did you do?"

He shrugs, uncaring. It's not hard for a genius to work out pressure and angles. It _was_ hard for him to contort his body in the right way, but he managed, and the bruises near his spine are as dark and rich as if they'd been made a few hours before.

"Jesus."

Rodney ignores the way every hair on his body is standing up straight. Anticipation is like a current, crackling under his skin to all the places John's always wanted to touch and hasn't quite ever been able to. He doesn't mind this, and it might be useful. It might actually show what Rodney can never say when John is here, like this.

"Rodney... " The touch is gentle this time, no longer firmed to bone and steel. The pads of John's fingers run over the looping whorls on Rodney's back, feather-light and just as frustrating. "You didn't have to do this."

He shrugs again. _You couldn’t._

* * *

The picture is an old one. Rodney stares at it, thumbs bracketing a single figure while he hunts for each detail. It wasn't hard to figure out, even a as a child. Despite what most Americans think, it gets hot in Toronto's summers; long sleeves were only the most blatant clue.

"Who's that?" John drapes himself over Rodney's side, casually certain Rodney will not object to this new, different kind of touch.

He won't. No matter how much he screams inside.

"My aunt. Aunt Karen. She passed away a few months ago. Um. More like six months ago." Military mail is never fast. Add light years of distance instead of furlongs and it gets even worse.

"She looks like you. A little." John squints, turning Rodney's hand this way and that until the photograph is angled the way he wants it. "She has the chin. How old was she?"

In this picture she is probably their age. "Sixty one."

John whistles. "Wow, that's young. Hey, it's not some kind of family thing, is it? Your parents died pretty early, too, I thought."

Rodney hears the unspoken message and tries not to shiver; John doesn't like that, not when his guilt is still smarting. "My parents died in a car accident, so no, I doubt that's hereditary."

"And your aunt?"

"That... might be." His thumbnail, dirty from engine grease, lightly touches the curve of Aunt Karen's cheek. She's wearing too much make up. She always did.

"Yeah?" John twists, holding his gaze steady until Rodney has no choice but to acknowledge it. Only then does John look back at the photograph, studying the man whose arm is so possessive around Aunt Karen's shoulders. If she's a walking cliche, than her husband, Uncle Rhoddy, is a billboard. "You think so?"

"It's not really up to me."

* * * 

Almost three weeks later, Beckett grins as he snaps Rodney's chart closed. He doesn't say anything, but it's obvious who's behind John's sudden increase in dessert-rations.

They're all given to Rodney.

* * *

Rodney stares at the delicate Ancient vase currently lying in pieces around his bedside table. "I liked that one," he says dumbly.

"Sorry." John is panting, harsh, acrid sounds. "I'm sorry."

"For what?" The lights are on and they're both clothed, so he doesn't swallow the words back. That rule has always been tacit, anyway.

John punches again, this time glancing off the wall. It has to be painful -- stupid plastic alloy -- but John doesn't seem to notice. "For -- I don't know. I don't _know_. What the hell am I doing?" He twists to look at Rodney. "What am I doing to you?"

It's raw and painful and Rodney wishes he could kiss John, initiate that small defense, to make him not say anything else. It won't work, though. John hasn't touched him in almost a month, and he's made it very clear that Rodney's not to take up that burden in John's stead. "I'm not objecting."

"No. You never did, did you? Rodney McKay who can always complain about _something_ never said no."

He rolls his eyes. Moron. "And what does that tell you?" he asks, spacing the words out slowly.

It has the wrong effect. John goes frighteningly still, eyes wide as he stares at nothing. "That -- " His voice dries up, his throat locked. Rodney watches as he swallows, Adam's apple bobbing. "You're more messed up than I am. Christ."

It's a prayer, this time. Probably the first it’s ever been.

Rodney doesn't object when John sits on the bed next to him, body heat like a tease against Rodney's starved skin. His clothes feel like sandpaper. "I never said I wasn't," he says, because he doesn't want this. He _understood_ what everything before was, and it was okay. Not enough, maybe, not the best scenario, but okay. Livable. Workable.

He knows he's getting angry and it's hard to push it back down. He doesn't want this.

John shakes his head, taking Rodney's hand and holding it palm-up. He traces over the lines there. "Dammit, Rodney, we can't do this anymore."

"I _never said no!"_ Anger -- fear -- cracks through him because he can't lose this. He can't. It's all he has left, imperfect, and flawed, and all he wants.

"I know, Rodney." Releasing his hand, John slides his along the planes of Rodney's arms, over his shoulders and up his neck, cupping his face. It's never been this gentle, not even when they're on missions.

It takes him a moment to realize that's because the threat, that constant, hovering pressure like a storm about to break, is gone. Clear skies surround them, and when John rests his fingers against Rodney's cheek, he wants nothing more than that.

"I didn't say no." The words sound different with John holding him this way.

"That's not the point. _I_ should have."

But -- that makes no sense, none at all, and it makes even more not-sense when John leans forward to kiss him. Softly, but with an inexorable drift that says he's not going to back away any time soon. Rodney makes a muffed sound, surprised. They've never done this before, not lips on lips, because John's kisses have always had teeth in them, and Rodney's not the type for lipstick.

No teeth, now. Just sweet pressure and a sense of yielding.

"I'm sorry," John says again.

"For _what?"_ He's starting to shake, now, and he hates it almost as much as he hates his confusion. There were patterns, before, boundaries and limits and Rodney had known every one of them.

Now there is nothing but John, and he is completely different.

"I'm sorry. I'll make it up to you."

Make _what_ up, he wants to ask, but John is kissing him again, pulling them down so that Rodney lays over John's body. He's too heavy, but John doesn't complain and something _breaks_ inside Rodney's mind.

* * *

He stares at his fist, knuckles already red, and the corresponding mark on John's stomach, where his shirt’s ridden up.

"Oh, my god."

* * *

When time starts working again, John is shushing him, taking Rodney's hand and working the fingers one by one. "You punch like a girl," he says, wryly amused, and that's wrong. It has to be wrong as John kisses the swelling affectionately. "I'm not going to let you do that again."

"Oh, what, so it's okay for you to beat me _bloody_ , but I'm not even allowed one girlish punch?" The words come out so fast they leave his throat dry and raw and he'd give anything to take them back.

The air feels different, now. He can't breathe correctly.

Shaking his head, John moves onto his knees and kisses Rodney until he's breathless in a new way. "No, Rodney. It's not okay. But it will be."

* * *

The mess hall is bright with sunlight, redolent with the smell of food that has come to signify home the way Big Macs never did. Teyla is giggling, an unusual sound for her, not even bothering to cover her mouth because she is too lost in Zelenka's rendition of whatever it is.

Rodney isn't paying attention.

John's hand is linked with his, fingers woven together, resting on the table where all can see.

No one even blinks at them. There is still whiteness around John's eyes, but it's fading.

Slowly, Rodney tightens his fingers around John's until he's balanced on the edge of causing them both pain --

\-- and then relaxes.


End file.
